The Global Equity Organization 17th annual conference took place 20-22 April in Boston, Massachusetts, where the much-anticipated 2016 GEO Annual Award winners were announced. Global Shares was delighted to see its client, DAI, win recognition in the equity plan industry for Best Use of a Share Plan in a Private Company.

The GEO Awards, which are in their 15th year, celebrate excellence by honoring companies from around the globe that demonstrate their leadership and dedication to their employee stock plans. DAI is an extremely worthy winner.

DAI is a company that has remained faithful to its originating ethos of bringing fresh alternatives and innovations to the practice of international development. They tackle social and economic development problems caused by inefficient markets, ineffective governance, and instability by combining expertise with innovation across multiple disciplines. An employee-owned company from the beginning, DAI recently restructured the company's ownership model to accommodate its increasingly global workforce. While ownership was previously limited to U.S.-based employees through its Employee Stock Ownership Plan, DAI can now offer an active ownership option to all global corporate employees, paving the way for international growth.

The Global Shares team understood DAI's vision to facilitate global ownership and set out to deliver a bespoke equity administration software solution that meets the company's unique equity needs. Working closely with the DAI team, Global Shares developed a custom DAI-branded employee participant portal to facilitate all investment elections through bespoke equity administration software. This platform supports the employee ownership culture at a global scale, unifying the company worldwide and assisting in the continued success of DAI. DAI employees join over 1 million users on the Global Shares equity plan management software platform in over 100 countries worldwide.

The DAI plan is creative and transformative due to its global, broad-based equity design, an innovative shift for a traditional U.S. ESOP-owned company and a move which was altogether worthy of recognition from the equity plan industry. Global Shares is thrilled to partner with DAI and help make their vision a reality. We look forward to working with such an ethical and inspiring company.